


la petit mort.

by liibrorum



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexual Content, trans!jeremy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-31 15:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21147779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liibrorum/pseuds/liibrorum
Summary: jean has to finish some work. jeremy has other plans.





	la petit mort.

**Author's Note:**

> this prompt was taken from the 2018 aftg bingo's jerejean card. prompt: seduction through objects. 
> 
> please remember that i like money just about as much as you all like my work. any and all ko-fi's go to paying my rent as well as my multiple medical bills that i accumulate throughout the year you can leave me a tip with cashapp @ $motherconjurer. : )
> 
> follow me on twitter for my aftg shitposting: @CANTATRICKS !

**prompt: “seduction through objects”**

It had been three years since Jean Moreau had graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in  _ Classic Literature,  _ of all goddamn things. Three years since he’d first seen Jeremy Knox’s smile when he whispered French compliments to him (mainly because he was too nervous to say them in English) and three years since the night he was near-certain he was going to kill himself. 

He still remembers the floorboard in which he had a pill bottle of opioid painkillers, kept out of Jeremy’s glance for fear of alerting him to the situation. It takes years to unlearn the trauma that someone like Riko Moriyama puts you under, and Jean Moreau is far from recovered, but he is alive, and he is healing.

They’ve lived in this apartment for three years— neither Jeremy nor Jean continued Exy careers after college (for Jeremy, the game was a love, but not a career; for Jean, saying no to a professional career was the last time he’d gotten to say  _ no  _ to what Riko Moriyama had demanded of him). Jeremy was a chemical engineer at a processing plant, and Jean worked from home for a publishing company. It was quiet work, and sometimes the quiet was too loud for Jean, but when Jeremy walked about their apartment on his days off, it was just enough.

It’s another record-breaking summer day in Irvine, California, and they have their windows open to cut down on the air conditioning bill— Jeremy makes good money consistently, but Jean makes more than him, only in burst amounts; nonetheless, they’re able to pay their bills. Jeremy’s mother has unfortunately instilled a frugal bone somewhere in his body. Jean doesn’t mind. This meant, however, that Jean had to sit in their office with the fan on low, and he’d been through three tall glasses of lemonade since waking up at eight in the morning.

Routine and organization was how Jean worked best, really, so work begins to get a little frustrating when the fan oscillates towards him and blows a forty-page manuscript off of his computer keyboard and into disarray on the floor. Hearing the French cursing from inside the other room, Jeremy enters with concern, his brow arched, shirt cropped, and lips stained blue from the red-white-and-blue Bomb Pop he’d had for an after-breakfast snack. Jean had never been able to eat sugar this early in the morning, but he never minded the sticky kisses his boyfriend offered him when he was done with a frozen treat.

“Everything alright?” Jeremy asks, voice drawled out— once a little country boy, now a city mouse with a high paycheck and even higher rent expenses.

“Yes,” Jean replies, his own voice crisp and accented— now that he has mastered the English idiom completely, the only thing that ever gives him trouble is the prominent French drip of the tongue that signaled him as an immigrant. “Damned fan, again.”

“Need some help?” 

“Not with your fingers all sticky and blue.” 

Jeremy’s laugh is like a birdsong against Jean’s ears, and he doesn’t remember when he sits on the floor against the carpet, looking up at the blond man with curious eyes. Jeremy begins to lick the blue syrup from his fingers, holding the half-eaten—only the white and blue remained—popsicle in the other hand. Even if he tried to wipe himself clean, Jean wouldn’t let him touch the papers: he hated waiting for the printer to spit them all out but hated editing on a computer more. Jeremy loved it when he was able to watch Jean sit and edit, covering stacks of paper in red ink with appropriate edits to original submissions. He was always unsure as to whether or not Jean liked his work as he didn’t talk about it too much, but Jeremy knew that Jean was going to put his all into this just like he put his all on the court back in college.

When Jean collects all the papers, he puts them on his desk and clips them out of order with a binder clip, something to be organized diligently in a moment. (He’s thankful that this is a smaller submission.) His hands are covered in red ink from missed pen-cappings, from checking to make sure if his pens are working, and from putting the wrong end of the pen down against his fingers when he was thinking. Jeremy liked that— he liked the little bits of humanity that were displayed on his boyfriend’s physique on occasion; the Jean Moreau of three years ago would never let that happen.

Jeremy is pulled out of his thoughts by his boyfriend’s phone alarm going off, signaling 12:00 noon. As the darker-haired man shuts off the alarm, Jeremy tosses him one of a few pill bottles that were scattered around the apartment— or, at least, they looked scattered to Jeremy. To Jean, they were conveniently placed in the rooms he was going to be in when the alarm went off so that he never had to wander too far to take his medicine. 8:00AM medicine — his antidepressant — was located in the bathroom; 12:00PM medicine — his anxiety medication — was located in the office; his 6:00PM medicine — a multivitamin, a calcium supplement, and his sleep aids — were in the kitchen. For when he was getting in his morning shower, for when he was leaving to take his lunch break in the office, and for when he was sitting down to eat dinner.

“ _ Merci, _ ” Jean thanks him moments before taking his medicine and returning the bottle back to the filing cabinet where it belonged.

“Lunch time,” Jeremy responds— a statement, not a question. He knows he can’t bother Jean while he’s working (deadlines are rough), so he waits for 12:00 noon and 5:00pm, when he knows Jean is through with the work for a bit or for the day, and he can kidnap the taller man away for a bit of fun. At his insistence, Jean closes the door to their office and makes his way into the kitchen.

Lunch is consisting of leftovers from dinner on the average day, though sometimes dinner is so good that there is no leftovers, and consequently sometimes dinner is so bad that they never want to eat it again. Today is leftover spaghetti and meatballs, and Jeremy is happy about the fact that it tastes just as good coming out of the microwave.

Jean prefers lemon water. Jeremy prefers Mountain Dew: Code Red. Jean prefers parmesan cheese sprinkled over the top. Jeremy prefers a little bit of extra salt and pepper. They are two different people, and it is beyond beautiful how seamlessly they coexist with each other. Moments like these are the kind of moments that Jean likes to stop and watch for a bit, with his elbow on the table, eyes lidded while Jeremy simply exists in front of him.

There’s a pause, and Jean blinks a few times, watching with intrigue as Jeremy’s lips wrap around the fork and take his complete bite— for a moment, everything exists as if it were in slow motion, and it isn’t until a bird flies up to the windowsill to sip out of their birdfeeder that Jean realizes… nothing really is in slow motion. Jeremy is just moving very slowly. With lidded eyes. And the corners of his lips turned up. His mind flickers back to Jeremy standing in the doorway with his popsicle, eating it slowly. With… lidded eyes. And the corners of his lips turned up.

“What are you doing?” Jean asks, his cheeks staining pink slightly at the implication— they’ve been together for years now, and it’s obvious that Jeremy’s been on his dick more than once, but this— this was just obscene.

“Nothing,” Jeremy replies, his voice as crisp and clear as any other time it would be. He holds up his bowl for Jean to see the contents. “Lunch. Why? What does it look like I’m doing?”

Unfortunately for Jean Moreau, he couldn’t just come out and say what he thought Jeremy was doing with a straight face— it had taken almost a year for Jean to even insinuate that he wanted to do anything sexual with Jeremy, and even then Jeremy initiated their lovemaking about 99% of the time. (The other 1% was when Jean would walk off of the courts in college riding an adrenaline high, or when his hands wandered briefly after Jeremy whispered out that pleased  _ “Yes…”  _ ) Clearing his throat instead, he dismisses his boyfriend with a wave of his hand and returns to his lunch.

A pleasant sort-of quiet envelops their living room, and not even the irritating wheel of Jeremy’s hamster squeaking in their bedroom cut him from his moment of silence. He closes his eyes once his plate is empty, the bend of his arm resting against his knee and his chin in his hand. Summer was far from his favorite time of year— he prefered the brisk autumn of Halloween and Thanksgiving— but this was nice.

He’s taken out of his thoughts by a soft moan, and one eye opens lazily to see what it was Jeremy had gotten himself into; lord knows that he’s bumped his knee against the coffee table one too many times trying to get up too fast. When dark eyes meet his partner, however, he blinks a little bit at the sight of Jeremy lazily dragging his tongue up the flat curve of the spoon with his eyes locked onto Jean. “Spaghetti tastes even better the second time around,” he tells the taller man, letting his spoon drop into the bowl. The shorter of the two men was openly grinning, now, and Jean’s lips purse a bit to choke down the red that was beginning to stain angled cheeks.

“What is it you’re trying to get at?” Jean asks when he rises to take Jeremy’s plate. He begins to scrape off what’s left of the sauce and noodles into the compost before setting the plates upright in the dishwasher. When he turns, he catches an eyeful of Jeremy, his head resting against the back of the couch and his arms resting underneath his head.

“I don’t get why you’re so  _ busy.  _ Is it like, prime publishing time?” He practically whines, hoping to get some rise out of his boyfriend.

“Summer research papers are being published, yes,” Jean replies, approaching the back of the couch and leaning a bit to be eye-level with his now-sitting boyfriend. Their noses bump, briefly, and Jeremy smiles. (There was a time, once, when Jean wouldn’t initiate any contact whatsoever, and Jeremy had to lead all of their affections. Now, Jean is content with being the one to hold Jeremy’s hand, to place his hand on the small of Jeremy’s back, to bump Jeremy’s nose, to kiss Jeremy—) “And academia has to have a tighter rein than fiction or children’s books.”

His finger runs gently over Jeremy’s lip, smiling down at bit at how cute his boyfriend was on his day off. A usually-neatly styled undercut-hawk-thing of sorts is ruffled blonde curls, he’s dressed down from the normal collared-shirt-and-khaki ensemble he has to wear to work, and his eyes are lidded as if he were sleepy. Jean wonders what time he went to bed last night— must have been pretty late.

Jeremy’s lips part, as if he were to say something, but before he could begin to muster any kind of word, Jean is taken aback by Jeremy’s lips wrapping around Jean’s thumb and staying there. His lidded eyes were definitely not sleepy— instead very sexy— and the Frenchman pretends not to notice when Jeremy’s tongue runs itself up the underside of the digit.

“I took my shot this morning,” Jeremy reveals, and all of a sudden, all of Jeremy’s behavior from this morning makes sense— he never was the same after his testosterone injection, and normally, Jean was happy to oblige in whatever nonsensical romp around the bedroom he was being asked. 

“My lunch hour lasts another thirty minutes,” Jean tells him, a brow quirked as he taps his finger lightly against the tip of Jeremy’s nose. Crinkling it a bit in response, the blonde man laughs.

“Thirty minutes is all I’m asking.”


End file.
